$700 dollar cell phone by John Grochalski

5 a.m.
and i’m stumbling
around the apartment
in my fat belly
and baggy underwear
can’t find the $700 dollar cell phone
have no idea where i put it
know where i put the wine last night
know where i put the vodka
call the thing!
call the goddamned thing!
i’m shouting to my wife
like a man whose lost a fortune
christ, a few months ago
you couldn’t pay me
to have one of these fucking things
now look at me
call the thing!
call the goddamned thing!
i’m still shouting
tuning over books and unopened mail
tossing away important items
that i’ll be searching frantically for later
rummaging for this goddamned device
when i should be sucking coffee
and writing the day’s poems
i don’t even call anyone on the fucking thing
just listen to music
and text my wife
asking her where she’s at all of the time
this $700 cell phone
could be at the bottom of the ocean
for all i care
i’m more concerned that i’m not keeping it together
this lost cell phone
is an indictment against nights of excess
and mornings after that don’t come easy at my age
this missing cell phone
is the cusp of a nervous breakdown
that i’ve been threatening for months
a trip to rehab
if i don’t watch it
call the thing!
call the goddamned thing!
i shout
as my wife glares at me
holding her $700 phone in both hands
and then…
there it is
on some random shelf
on top of a book of outlaw poetry
that wasn’t so outlaw
and i grab the thing
this $700 cell phone
made from the rape of africa
and slave labor in china
sweating like a junkie
relieved as if i’d found my lost keys
or a missing kid
hold it toward the light
as if it were the cup of christ
exuberant
joyful
suddenly forgetting my malaise
my existential alcoholic crisis
then i move the $700 dollar cell phone
from one shelf to the next
to go and take a piss
letting it sit there idle yet again
with all of the other useless crap
that covers
this ever-loving domicile
from dingy wall
to dingy goddamned wall.

John Grochalski is the author of the poetry collections, The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and The Philosopher’s Ship (Alien Buddha Press, 2018). He is also the author of the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016).  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.